


leave a candle burning for me

by astrogeny



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: Exploration of skill mechanics in-universe, F/F, Healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 20:09:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19325221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrogeny/pseuds/astrogeny
Summary: If she looks too placid, too serene, too much as a lady should--Celica will notice.  What delights and thrills and scares Rinea all at once is that Celica will alsocare.  She is always seeking to set things to rights, and this is a crusade Rinea can open her unquiet heart to.





	leave a candle burning for me

**Author's Note:**

> if i write enough fic about rinea being in feh, will she actually get into the game? tbh, this is barely feh-related--i just wanted to use the setting as an excuse for Healing Fic (tm), and celica's ever-popular fury + desperation + triple brazens kit is definitely something that would require post-battle patching-up. what i find interesting (and hard to write!) about the idea of celica/rinea is that they're both very internal characters. celica is more extroverted overall, but she still bottles so much up and tries to carry things on her own. so i think they would be in this odd situation where they both struggle to say what they're feeling, but they also understand each other very well, and trust follows that. what can i say, i like exploring the side of celica that has trouble opening up, and i also like rinea being Appreciated. this is, alas, probably not the last Healing Fic i'll inflict on the world.

There are times when Celica returns with such wounds that it seems impossible for her to even be conscious. Yet always, she walks back on her own two feet. Always, with her chin held high, just so. Proud.

Not too proud to avoid Rinea, though--not these days. Sometimes, Rinea blesses this lapse in Celica's pride, while other times, she curses it. It reminds her that she has the power to wipe this all away in an instant, and she is still not that power's master.

"Thank you," Celica murmurs. It sounds more like "Benk youb," with her bottom lip so swollen. Her wounds are rarely external--instead, she always looks as if there is something else, something angry, rioting beneath her skin, leaving bruises from the inside. Rinea's stomach and heart turn in concert.

"Could I not--That is, if I were to ask the summoner if I--or another healer, if they would rather--could instead attend to you out there," and here Rinea hesitates, never sure what to call the endless scattered worlds outside this one, "Would they still refuse?" This isn't the first time she's offered. On one hand, the idea of standing on a battlefield with nothing but a wooden stave and her own fear is enough to make panic spike through her. On the other, the idea of healing someone just to render them fit to return to killing is enough to make anger pound its fists against the walls of her heart she keeps it boxed up in.

Celica sighs, the air so reluctant to part from her, barely stirring the limp curls that hang in front of her face.

"Magic is... Different, here. In our world, it's unwise to use too much, since it eats away at you. But here, I get stronger the more I use, somehow." Her lips twist. The expression could be described, if one were uncharitable, as a wry grimace. Rinea is nothing if not charitable, though. "It's a valid strategy, and I can't disagree with the results. In short, it would be disadvantageous to have a healer around, strange as that sounds."

Rinea feels her brow furrowing into a frown. Even now, she has to remind herself not to stop it. If she looks too placid, too serene, too much as a lady should--Celica will notice. What delights and thrills and scares Rinea all at once is that Celica will also _care_. She is always seeking to set things to rights, and this is a crusade Rinea can open her unquiet heart to.

It's cruel of her, to let Celica speak such certain words, when her busted lip is still making a mush of them. Rinea takes the staff from her lap, grips it tight. Readjusts. Readjusts again, wishing foolishly that there were grips to indicate how she should hold it correctly. The staff is always a little unwieldy, but it's also a channel that Rinea can pour her magic into, without the constant fear that she will be too much, filling up a patient until they burst like overripe fruit. She tries to remember her long-ago lessons: start general, then focus on specific wounds.

The only sound is Celica's breathing. At first, it's ragged, as if her lungs are clawing through mud just to get the slightest breaths in and out. As renewal runs from Rinea, through the staff, into Celica, the muddiness dissipates. Celica blooms and brightens, no longer looking quite so haggard. Rinea would marvel at it if it didn't frighten her so much. All her focus narrows to giving just enough, to blocking out the fear that she will overwhelm Celica like an overzealous gardener drowning a flower in an attempt to water it. She tries to keep the flow steady, even as she feels like she's being hurled forward through the air with nothing to break her fall. She pours herself out, checks that Celica is healing, pours, checks, pours, checks, pours--

"Rinea," Celica says quietly. "Remember to breathe."

Rinea nearly rips apart the connection between them. Every muscle in her body is too taut to tremble. Her head spins--from nerves, or because she realizes, belatedly, that she's left her own breath trapped in her body?

The staff is slick with sweat, even though the basic healing couldn't have taken more than five minutes. Rinea moves to set it aside, then stops herself. Her work is hardly done.

Celica misses none of this.

"Would it be easier to do it normally?" She asks. "That is, without the staff?"

"Would you prefer I not use it?"

"Would you prefer not to use it?" Celica isn't throwing Rinea's words back in her face, so much as she is turning them to a new angle and handing them back for reexamination. Even when she is being cared for, Celica tries to care for someone else. Rinea knows that, for both of them, caring for someone else is so much easier than caring for oneself.

The biggest bruises that have laid stubborn claim to their space beneath Celica's skin remind Rinea what she will always reap by clinging helplessly to indecision. She sets the staff down again and lays her hands atop a welt on Celica's forearm.

This time, there is no staff to act as an intermediary. The healing pulls itself from Rinea with hardly any urging on her part, eager to soothe blood and tissue back into harmony. Rinea follows the press of her magic with a gentle press of her fingertips, as if she means to push the raised skin back into place. Celica bears this soundlessly--if anything, she almost seems to relax, though Rinea knows that a healing seldom feels pleasant.

When she moves to a fist-sized blotch on Celica's collarbone, Rinea ventures a question.

"How can you stand it?"

"The fighting?"

"The," and like always, Rinea's words are uncarded wool that she can only ever manage to spin into lumpy, uneven thread. "All of it. Does it not scare you, that you could lose control?"

Celica doesn't answer right away. For all that she knows how to say what a leader ought to, there are also things that Celica throws into dark rooms within herself and slams the door on. Sometimes, their relationship seems to Rinea like an endless game of taking turns, each of them slowly opening one of those doors to the other, trusting that from now on, it can stay ajar.

"This may seem irrelevant," Celica says at last. "But bear with me?"

Rinea nods.

"In Zofia--or at Novis, at least, the first thing a novice mage has to learn to do is properly light a candle for the Mother's altar. Is it the same in Rigel?"

Rinea can remember a desk strewn with chunks of wax. A switch on the back of her hand for every candle she destroyed, then for every sob she let out when she refused to try again.

"More or less, yes."

"Well, when I first came to the priory, I balked at the thought of learning magic. Grandpapa--Sir Mycen, that is--had already taught me something of swordplay." Celica laughs, though not unkindly, at the vestige of her younger self. "I suppose I thought myself some kind of knight in the making, too good for magecraft. It's easier to act strong than to admit when you're afraid. And I _was_ afraid, since--you know--"

"The fire at the villa," Rinea supplies. Celica had told her about that on a clear morning, when they'd sat side by side atop Rinea's bed without the anonymity of darkness to hide behind. Celica had called it cowardice on her part, those years of fleeing. Rinea had called it bravery instead--not just to survive, but to speak of it. There is a power in being able to name your fears with your own words.

"It wasn't as if seeing a cooking fire or a candle that was already lit bothered me," Celica continues. "But when Nomah finally got me to try, I couldn't make anything happen. I knew I was capable, but I was so scared that I'd set the whole priory ablaze if I let anything out, so I kept it all bottled in. Nomah kept pushing me, though. For such a jolly old man, he can certainly be stubborn when it suits him! And it didn't happen overnight, but I eventually saw I had... A choice, I suppose?"

Done with Celica's collarbone at last, Rinea hesitates to start work on Celica's face. The swelling on her lip is gone, but the discoloration around her chin and cheek remains.

"I don't wish to interrupt," Rinea explains, her hand hovering uncertainly. Indeed, it's easier to focus when Celica is talking, taking up the space that Rinea's fears are always so eager to fill.

"Oh, it's alright. All I meant to say was that my choice was to master my power, or let it master me."

"You make it sound like such a clear choice."

"Finding the choice was simple enough. Making it wasn't. Honestly, it still isn't easy."

Celica leans into Rinea's touch, like baring her throat to a blade. Like letting fire burn on her bare hands, trusting that it will not swallow her whole.

"I'd go stir-crazy if I sat still," Celica says softly. "Even when I think back to what I did in our world, I think I would still do it again, mistakes and all, instead of sitting about and living with the uncertainty. I can't simply tell myself that someone else will take care of things."

Rinea considers all this, finally making the sickly purple bruise fade to brownish-green, then retreat into nothingness. Just like that, she can undo wounds that warriors must train years to learn how to make. She feels her power is a poor counterpart to Celica's, a conviction that consumes Celica as much as it does her enemies.  
  
Yet, if power is the only coin any world will ever see fit to trade in, it has finally bought her something more than self-loathing and suffering. Rinea lets the realization carve itself a shape in her mind--that these moments she spends healing Celica have built a road between them, paved with a trust that goes both ways. It does nothing to change that Celica will go to fight again. She will still be strong, and Rinea will still be afraid. All it changes is that maybe, now, Rinea can move forward despite the fear.

"You'll still be sore for a time, I'm afraid," is what Rinea says instead of the thoughts sprawling through her like vines on a trellis. She remembers an odd Zofian saying Celica told her once: _No village is built in a day_. Knowing that Celica will hear her out when she is ready to speak is laying the foundations for that village.

"It's a small price to pay," Celica replies. Celica leans against Rinea's shoulder, exhausted, and what she gives Rinea in that moment is stronger, softer than any blade either of them could lift.

 

 

 

 


End file.
